I almost always have Rudo and Amy in the game. Um, other than that I switch through the other characters. If you have two Storm Gears (by the time you complete Menobe, that is), any of the weak characters will have fairly good weapon choices for the rest of the game and you can load them down with armor without equipping weapons.

Anna is really useful for walking around Skure, Crevice and the Dezo landscape. Her slashers have a definite advantage to the multiple enemies like the weirdo orangutans and gross rabbits. If you're not into level grinding, take Anna. She won't be as useful technique-wise, but she has better level-up gains and her weapons are probably the third most useful, behind Rolf's and Rudo's.

Kain becomes less useful after the dams, as there aren't as many mechas on Dezo. However, like Anna he's pretty strong. She's more agile, though, and has a weapons advantage. Recently I heard that Kain's mech techs work on the supernatural enemies, and I can honestly say I've never tried using them against fiends and what-not even though I've played the game about a billion times!

Shir... eh. Her biggest advantage is her agility. She's just as agile as Anna (maybe more), which makes her a great items user. The game royally screwed her out of decent endgame weapons because the Laconian Dagger's stats are bugged. She does learn useful techs, but takes forever to learn them.

Amy and Hugh are the tech gods of the party, and because she can equip the Nei Crown and the Nei Cape, you can keep Amy equipped with two fire staves and she'll still have fairly high defense stats. Her defense and healing techs are her biggest boost to the party. Hugh's vol and savol can be both frustrating and life savers. Amy and Hugh have pretty poor stat gains, and Hugh will die from a Shadow just looking at him wrong because for some reason he can equip almost none of the good armor. If he's low-level by the end of the game, the Nei Shield is a must for him.

Whew. So anyway, I use Rolf, Rudo, Amy and switch out the other characters. If I wanted to get through the game the quickest I'd probably take Anna.

I wonder if they actually bugged Shir's Laconian Daggers or did that intentionally so that she could have a crap load of defense while being able to act faster then most enemies so she can keep them healed with items.

@Kaloes - I don't think so, because equipping her with emels provides even more defense without losing agility. In fact, you can equip her with one laser knife and one ceram. emel and it would still provide more defense than two lac. daggers. Of course, once you get the Nei emel you could equip a lac. dagger and the Nei emel, but you'd be better off equipping another emel to Shir since the daggers do 0 damage most of the time.

My guess is that the lac. dagger stats are bugged, and that they should have been attack +42, defense, +2. I don't hack these games, so I don't know what these items look like in the code, but it could be that the numbers should have been divided as 42/2 instead of 4/22.

Who wasn't ticked the first time they played this, bought Shir the daggers and discovered they were basically made out rubber? I was so mad!

Oh, and one more thing: If you don't take Amy to Dezo, be sure each party member has one of the Gires items. In fact, even if you have Amy give everyone a Gires item, anyway. You can only use them during battle and only on the character who is holding the item (which is why everyone needs their own), but the Gires items have saved my butt on more than one occasion when I've run out of trimates.

Oh, and make sure to keep Shir away from Dezolis, also. She has a chance to steal in any store you visit, and if she steals on Dezolis, you have a really bad choice to make: Trude on with three characters, or go back to Rolf's house and pick Shir up again.

Anyway, my own personal experience with the party members:

Rolf- Well, you're forced to use him, and quite understandably so. He's reasonably good all-around, though a little lacking in Tech Points later on.

Rudo- Pretty straightforward troubleshooter. (Rolf finds trouble, Rudo shoots it.) Guns are always useful, moreso against the mechanoids later in the game, because they always do a fixed amount of damage.

Amy- The good thing about her is she's a phenomenal healer- everyone who isn't Kain gets some healing techs, but Amy gets the really good ones. The only issues I had with her in the party are a lack of serious offense (even with what's arguably her best weapon, dualwielded Fire Staves) and she's slow. Really slow. She usually goes last in any combat round. She's a party staple for me because, well, she reminds me of my girlfriend. =D

Hugh- I've seen lingerie more durable than Hugh. Now that I got that out of the way, I believe he has the best Tech Point growth out of the entire party, and though his biologic-affecting techs are useless against mechanoids, they are useful against the supernatural enemies on Dezolis and the endgame.

Anna- Not bad for grouped enemies, really, though PSII is rather fond of spawning, say two groups of Locustas at once and Anna can only attack one group at a time.

Kain- Why the hell can't he use the Nei Shot?! Anyway... Kain's about as all-around as Rolf is, only more rifle-oriented. His techs mostly affect mechanoids, and are, like Hugh's, useful against supernatural enemies later on.

Shir- She's agile. =D It's a complete pain in the butt to have her steal from a store, though, and her best weapon is most likely bugged due to a coding screwup. Oh, and the fact that she gets Na Zan at a level where it's really not worth it to grind that far. She's a challenge to have in the party, but some people (me) use her. =D

Y'all have blown my mind with the revelation that Kain's techs can be used against the magic enemies. How is it that I've played this game for 20 years (I just shuddered at that thought) and never once thought, "Hmm... I wonder what would happen if I try some gaj on that King Lava..."

And grrrr! Now I really want to play Gen2 despite Rudo's awful makeover. I honestly think that if the original Rudo met up with his Gen2 self, he'd shoot him dead for wearing that circus unitard.

Another thing about Rudo that I didn't mention before: He is the Wren of PS2. I have a game saved on my Wii where everyone is around level 40, and he has well over 100 HP more than Rolf (Edit: I was wrong about this. I just checked my game and Rolf and Rudo are both level 40. Rudo has 339 HP and Rolf has 269 HP. In any event, Rudo is still the tank of the group.). I always put him up front and let him take the brunt of the enemy attacks.

Snorb - I agree with you about the lack of good guns for Kain. The best gun he can equip is the Laser Shot, right? He should have at least been able to equip one of the Pulse guns. I mean, the best thing he can equip are those Laconian Maces? Really? They don't even look like maces in his ending cutscene.

Last edited by Tanith on Tue May 25, '10, 2:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I don't even equip him with the Laser Shot if I take him all the way to Noah. I'd say a majority of the magic enemies take more damage with close range weapons, aside from the fire enemies and... maybe the dragons? Fortunately the Nei Shot does about 100 points of damage, so it doesn't matter, but the Laser Shot is a far cry from the Nei Shot.

I personally think slashers were overpowerful in PSII, but I guess I shouldn't complain.

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